by SM Reine
Sophie was at his side, holding his arm again. She reminded him of his throbbing headache. It hurt even more, somehow, but he’d still managed to forget it while drowning in the certainty that they were about to watch war erupt.
It hadn’t happened.
Not yet.
“Did I do good?” Lincoln asked Sophie.
She patted him awkwardly. “You tried. There, there.”
“That’s it? I just stood up for Abel like you’d want me to. Where’s my fucking ticker tape parade?”
“You don’t get cookies for trying to be a decent human being.” Sophie patted him again. “But…you are trying. I hope you will feel good enough about yourself that you don’t need my validation.”
Nothing felt good to Lincoln right now. Not one fucking thing.
He turned to Summer and Rylie. “You okay?”
“Not really,” Rylie said, “but it’s not the first time we’ve butted heads with law enforcement. We’ve got kind of a history. It’s just…” She clapped a hand over her mouth and swallowed something that might have been a cry. “It doesn’t get easier.”
“I can call the secretary of the OPA,” Lincoln said.
Rylie shook her head. “I don’t want them in here.”
Thank God for that. Lincoln would have called Friederling and Hawke on her behalf, but if he didn’t have to deal with them again, all the better. “Do you have a lawyer?”
“We can find a couple in the pack, I think.” Summer had wrapped her arm around Rylie and was rubbing her shoulder. She kissed the top of the Alpha’s head. “It’s going to be okay. Abel will be okay. I promise.”
“I don’t know if I will be okay without him,” Rylie whispered.
Lincoln felt something inside of himself crumbling—some kind of wall he hadn’t even know he’d built up. It was followed by a surge of familiar heat. The fire of justice unmet. “I’ll help,” Lincoln said, and he meant it. “My pickup’s too slow. How fast can you guys get me to Northgate?”
Summer’s eyes warmed for him. “Fast.”
Chapter 35
Lincoln had never driven a car that made him feel as physically aroused as the pack’s Chevy Chevelle—a beastly machine propelled by a growling engine that handled elevation changes effortlessly, even if it handled the curves more clumsily than a drunken whale on wheels. At another time, he’d have been happy to cruise around in the thing for days. He still stepped out at the sheriff’s office feeling like he’d had sex with a demon even dirtier than Elise.
“That is a nice car,” Lincoln said, trailing a hand adoringly over the hood.
Sophie snagged his sleeve. “Please remember that we’re trying to stave off a riot.”
“Right.” But he still watched it over his shoulder as he walked away, wondering if there was any amount of money that could get that car into his hands.
Lincoln didn’t even get to check in at the GCSD lobby. The second the officer at the front desk saw him, he paged Noah.
The rear door opened, and his brother-in-law emerged.
“Are you letting him go?” Lincoln asked.
“You know that nobody gets out of here that fast,” Noah said. “He hasn’t even appeared in front of the judge.”
If he planned to subject a werewolf Alpha to the glacial machinations of the post-Genesis justice system, that wasn’t going to go over well, either. “Have you charged him with anything?”
Noah folded his arms. “Marshall…”
“Have you?”
“Not yet,” he finally said. “But we’ll have enough evidence soon, and then I’ll formally charge him. I won’t let the pack rule this area with fear.”
“Oh, irony, you fail to be charming, just as ever,” Sophie said.
Noah’s eyes hardened. “Let’s continue this conversation in back.”
He lifted the counter. Lincoln and Sophie went into the back hall with him, which led toward the jail cells.
Noah didn’t look any happier to have Sophie following. “Can she hear us if we’re quiet?” he muttered to Lincoln. “Or is she like shifters with the ears?”
“She’s human,” Lincoln said.
The sheriff picked up his pace, putting a little distance between them and Sophie. “Jesus Christ, you fallen a long way, Linc.”
“Because I don’t want you to detain someone without reason?” Lincoln muttered back.
Noah flung his hands into the air. “He’s a werewolf! A violent werewolf. He hit one of my officers.”
“He couldn’t have hit hard, or you’d have a dead officer,” Lincoln said. “They pinned him against a car. They threatened him in front of his mate and his pack. What was he supposed to do?”
“Comply,” Noah said. “You know, you should be thanking me. Not only did I already capture the likeliest killer, protecting Uncle John, but I also captured the woman who vandalized your motel room. Verna Flaherty was caught with the paint found in your room. It had been dumped behind her house, and not well.”
Of all the people Lincoln would’ve expected to vandalize his hotel room, Verna was not among them. Maybe Poppy’s grand-niece. Or one of his sisters. But not Verna. “She’s been hospitalized.”
“She broke out,” Noah said.
That didn’t sound like Verna either. She had left peacefully with the attendants. She knew she needed help.
If she had broken out, it hadn’t been to threaten Lincoln.
“It appears that she may have been leaving and reentering the hospital freely,” Noah went on. “Their security system isn’t good. It’s hard to keep anyone there who doesn’t want to be kept.”
It just didn’t sit right. Sure, she was crazy, but Lincoln’s instincts had taken him far as a deputy. Instinct told him Verna wasn’t dangerous. “Can I talk to her? I want to know what she meant by those words on my wall.”
“She’s nuts.” Noah shrugged.
“What if she’s got something to do with the murders?” Lincoln asked.
Noah glanced back at the door and then at Lincoln. He visibly waffled. “All right, you can talk to Verna. Bear in mind that we’re gonna record the entire conversation. Don’t take your anger out on her.”
“I remember how it works,” Lincoln said.
Noah didn’t say another word when Lincoln led Sophie into the back where the holding cells were. He had escalated from antagonizing Lincoln over Sophie’s presence to downright ignoring her existence.
Silence meant giving up.
Silence was one step away from violence.
There were three cells in the jail, intended to be shared by multiple suspects. They had the capacity for up to a dozen people. But Verna and Abel were the only ones being held at the moment. They had been placed in cells on either end, with an empty space between them.
Abel stood from the bench when Lincoln came in. “You better hope for the sake of every one of those assholes wearing a badge that you’re here to let me out.”
Lincoln wished he had better news. “I’m working on them about the werewolf pack. If you just give us more time—”
Abel’s hand slammed into the bars with a loud clanging, cutting Lincoln off. “I don’t have time! They took me from my mate. My pack! I can’t protect them from here!”
“They’re not gonna do anything while you’re in here,” Lincoln said.
“You don’t know that. I know how bad humans can get. How bad cops can get.” Abel paced, glowering at the bars as if he were a butter knife detained by a stick of butter. “This isn’t the first time that I’ve been locked up, and it’s not even the first time I’ve been locked up without cause. People like that are scared of men like me.”
“You were being disrespectful,” Lincoln said. “Disrespectful werewolves are dangerous. They didn’t have any choice but to—”
This time, Abel struck the bars harder. “Don’t tell me that you never detained, questioned, or arrested a black man without reason!”
“I never did,” Lincoln said. He looked askance at So
phie and found that she wasn’t looking back. She had edged nearer Verna. Lincoln didn’t have backup.
“Bullshit,” Abel said.
This wasn’t the time for this debate. Lincoln wasn’t even certain he could debate it anymore. “I will get you out of here after I talk to Verna. Somehow, I’ll do it. Just wait and don’t do anything stupid while I figure this out with Rylie.”
Abel sneered. “Define stupid. I don’t get big words.”
“The fuck you don’t,” Lincoln said. “Tell me you’ll stay here.”
“Tell me you’ll put your blood on the line if the cops go after my family,” Abel said.
Lincoln swallowed hard. “Deal.”
The Alpha didn’t look convinced, but he also didn’t speak when Lincoln edged toward Verna and Sophie. Leaving Abel felt wrong—like Lincoln was a bomb disposal technician walking away from an incendiary device about to blow.
Verna started talking the instant she realized that she had Lincoln’s attention. “I didn’t vandalize your motel room. I have nothing against preternaturals.” She added the last part while eyeing Abel. She was right to be afraid. Those bars weren’t silver, and nothing would keep Abel from eating her except his humanity—assuming that he had some.
“I don’t think that you vandalized my room,” Lincoln said. “The evidence is compelling, though. Maybe if you can tell me how that paint landed in your backyard, I could figure out who did it.”
“I painted a wall in my kitchen that color before Genesis,” Verna said. “I know it seems silly, redoing a house during the apocalypse. I was one of the last people there, you see. Nowhere else to go. It was a group home for people like me who couldn’t live alone. Who don’t have parents. But even they ran, when I stuck around.”
“Who else currently has access to your house?”
“We never lock the doors. We don’t have anywhere else safe to go, and the things that I fear don’t care about locks.” She shivered and wrapped her arms around herself, squeezing her eyes shut. “I need my meds.”
“What medication?” Sophie asked.
Verna rubbed her arms hard, her frail hands shaking. “I have an anti-seizure medication that I need. And something to help with the nightmares. I know they don’t plan to let me out tonight, and I won’t be able to sleep if I don’t have my medicine.” Her cheeks flushed pink. “Can you help me? Can you ask them to get my pills?”
Sophie rested her fingers on the bars. “I will retrieve it myself if I must. Where can I find it?”
“There’s some at my house,” Verna said. “In my bathroom. The big pink bag has everything.”
“We’ll figure it out,” Sophie said.
Verna took as little comfort from their reassurance as Abel. But she wasn’t a scary, prowling wolf inside a cage. She was just tiny and shivering and frail.
“Why did you give us those dates on the files?” Lincoln asked. “I didn’t find anything in the newspaper about it.”
“You wouldn’t,” she said. “But the police records… They’ll explain everything.”
There was no way Lincoln could get at the records room here. Noah would never allow it. “Can’t you just tell us?”
“No,” Verna whispered.
“Why not?”
“You’ll never hear me,” she said, even quieter than before.
“Just speak up,” he said. He was pressed against the bars now, trying to get to her, and the things she knew.
“I did, before, when it all happened,” she said. “So many of us did. And nobody heard. You have to just see it for yourself.” Her hand crept from between the bars, cold against Lincoln’s knuckles. She tugged him nearer, and Lincoln pressed his cheek against the bars, low enough that she could breathe into his ear again.
She breathed the truth—the things he didn’t want to see.
And Verna was right. He would never believe her unless he saw it himself.
Lincoln wasn’t exactly sure how he got out of the jail cells into the lobby again. He didn’t feel his body. His toes and fingers were numb. Verna’s last words were rattling inside of him, screaming through the loudest silence he’d ever felt.
He stopped in the corner of the hallway, leaning beside the water fountain.
“What’s wrong?” Sophie asked.
Lincoln opened his mouth. He was dead on the inside, filled with the void. There was no sound where there was no oxygen.
When he was admitted to the group home, Wilson Dickerson asked to be called Junior.
That was what Verna Flaherty had said.
He still couldn’t feel his fingers when he pulled those two photos out of his back pocket. The one of his dad holding the baby, and the one of the boys identified as Wilson and Tripp.
Wilson Dickerson asked to be called Junior.
Like John Junior, he assumed.
The baby could have been the young man too. Lincoln looked between them, over and over, until his eyes were blurry and he couldn’t be sure if the resemblance he saw was real.
It was impossible to tell if they were the same person.
But the dark-haired boy, dark as he was, did have the Marshall jawline.
“Verna just told me where my brother’s been,” Lincoln said.
Sophie’s hands crept to cover her mouth, eyes widening. “Oh.” The verbose Historian struck speechless.
Could it be possible that John Junior had been raised in a group home within Grove County, treated like a mental case? Just one of the invisible patients who seldom left, disconnected from the community, yet never more than miles from the people who shared his blood?
And after Genesis, had Junior come back human?
Chapter 36
One fascinating thing about American structures was their building codes, especially the transparency of the involved laws. Sophie had observed documentation displayed on nearly every public building visited in Grove County, as well as the casino she had seen in Nevada, and now she could quote several statutes regarding accessibility, smoking, and zoning.
She had also memorized the fire escape maps for most buildings upon entering them, including the Grove County Sheriff’s Office. They had such maps posted in every hallway. Sophie had correlated the unlabeled squares on the map with the actual rooms she passed, and she made an educated guess as to which of the yet-unidentified rooms would hold the GCSD records.
They rounded a corner and Sophie spotted her destination. “This is all quite similar to the mental health institute, as far as placement is concerned,” Sophie said. “Gods’ blessings upon Americans for their structural uniformity!”
Lincoln looked at her blankly. “What?” He most likely could have told Sophie exactly where to find the records room, but he’d been in such shock since leaving Verna that he’d followed her in numb silence for minutes.
“Newspaper archives didn’t have our information, but Verna said that we could find it here,” Sophie said gently. She nudged him toward the door. “Go look.”
A voice echoed around the hall, gruff and masculine. “Is someone down there?”
Noah had heard them.
“Go,” Sophie urged. “I’ll distract him.”
Lincoln slid through the door just in time.
“What are you doing back here?” Noah Adair resembled his brother-in-law even though they weren’t related by blood. It was less to do with their features and much more to do with their attitudes. Both held themselves with confidence and authority, as if they knew that everybody would respect the very sight of them.
Sophie had seen enough of Lincoln to find him endearing, on some irrational level. She had no such feelings for Noah. Even now, in this lantern-lit office hallway, he was surrounded by toxic energy. A man constantly looking for a fight he planned to win by any means necessary.
Sophie would’ve been a fool if she hadn’t felt fear.
“I was looking for you,” Sophie said. “I hoped to speak with you privately, if possible. Of course I understand that your time may be occupie
d, but in that case, I will gladly wait nearby for an idle moment I can claim.” Oh dear, now she was babbling. Sheriff Adair would certainly know she was up to something.
“This area is prohibited. Follow me.” He turned on his heel, and Sophie tried not to gaze with open longing at the records room as they passed it.
“How can I help you?” Noah asked curtly, opening a door to usher her through the lobby to his office.
“I wish to…erm.” She hadn’t thought that far yet.
“Well?” he demanded.
“I wish to speak on behalf of the werewolves,” Sophie said. “I have evidence that there is another breed of preternatural responsible for the murders.”
“Evidence?” Noah set a folder on his desk, then shut the door behind her. It was very dim. The only light came from a Zippo he used to light a candle on his desk. “Are you aware that it’s a crime to steal evidence?”
How quickly he jumped to conclusions. “It’s only evidence of the entity itself, not evidence of a crime.” Sophie showed him the sliver of skin that she had removed from Lincoln’s dagger. She had been carrying it in her pocket. “Though this may not appear like much to you at first sight, if you look closely, you’ll notice the telltale structure of subcutaneous fat and the pores from which hair grew, seemingly fossilized into stone instantly.”
The sheriff gave her a blank look.
Sophie held the stone skin nearer the light. “It’s dark, but you really can see it if you look closely,” she said.
“What did you say I’m looking for? Speak English.” He tipped his hat back so the brim wouldn’t touch the flame when he leaned in.
“This looks to be a piece of stone, but there are signs that it came off of the living creature.” Sophie chose her words more carefully, but still wasn’t sure it was simple enough. His expression didn’t change. “There is a class of preternatural creature that is living stone. Based on witness accounts, I believe this one is colloquially known as a gargoyle. They are animated by a witch’s spell. Flesh detached from their bodies turns to stone permanently. This was cut from one.”
